Across Western Europe the alarming impact of global warming has been acutely felt this summer. Record temperatures contributed to thousands of heat-linked deaths; drought has been disastrous for agriculture; wildfires brought loss and fear. This is while no part of the globe escapes from extreme weather events, often severe enough to dominate media headlines.
The political parties that claim to prioritise the fight against climate change are those calling themselves Green or ecology parties, and it isn’t surprising that many of them have at times increased their electoral support and membership on the basis of hopes that they are indeed the most environmentally friendly option to choose.
However, no major economy in the entire world is on target to meet its planned part of the agreement made at the 2015 Paris climate summit, to keep “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”, and this includes every country where a Green party has been part of a government.
In the current decade there has been a record number of governments with Green representation in them, including in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Spain, Latvia, New Zealand and Scotland. At most they have influenced environmental policy in ways that fall far short of what is needed to stop and reverse climate change. They inevitably place blame on the larger parties they have been in coalition with, but an examination of even the most left programmes of those Green parties shows that if any of them were to receive enough votes to be a majority in a government, they still wouldn’t be able to challenge the interests of big business enough to stop climate change. At best they put forward proposals for wealth redistribution and increased state intervention and investment, which are not aimed at removing the capitalist system that is the fundamental cause of environmental destruction.
Marxists explain that a system based on capital accumulation at the expense of workers and environmental sustainability, and based on competing capitalist nation states, will never be able to deliver the massive reorganisation of society that is needed to both satisfy people’s needs and fund enough research and investment to fully counter environmental devastation. Yet the Green parties in power have accommodated to capitalist interests and under big business pressure have watered down, postponed or abandoned many of the environmentally friendly proposals they previously pioneered.
In 2023 Green ministers in Germany agreed to temporarily extend the lifespan of two nuclear power stations and approved the expansion of a coal mine which involved the demolition of a village. The government they were part of from 2021 to 2024 also developed major infrastructure projects to expand the ability to import liquified natural gas. Green ministers in Ireland completely U-turned on their previous policy of banning imports of fracked liquid natural gas and approved the construction of a terminal for it. They also didn’t prevent a rapid growth of huge energy-devouring data centres that now take over a fifth of Ireland’s electricity, placing carbon reduction targets further out of reach.
The two co-leaders of the Scottish Greens, before the collapse of their power-sharing deal with the Scottish National Party (SNP) in 2024, defended a decision to abandon a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030. Also, in late 2023 they accepted government budget proposals that would impact badly on environmental improvements, including cutting £80 million from rail services, £33 million from forestry and woodland creation, and £37 million from the Just Transition Fund that was set up to support green jobs and infrastructure.
Green leaders have usually tried to portray such decisions as acceptable trade-offs in wider sets of measures that they claim will reduce emissions overall. But those other measures are woefully insufficient – any small reduction in emissions achieved is not at the pace and quantity that is urgently needed.
The Green parties in government haven’t only failed to deliver against the multifaceted environmental crisis. Their support for other austerity measures has also been a significant cause of major backlashes they have experienced from voters, leading to their removal from power in most cases. In Iceland they suffered a complete parliamentary wipe-out in 2024, and in Ireland near wipe-out that same year. Their loss of support has led to internal debate and division within their ranks, and sometimes there has been organised protest action by environmental activists against specific Green party betrayals.
In response, one of the narratives of their leaders has been to argue that as their priority is the environment, they have suffered from ‘greenlash’ because people are more interested in having a lower cost of living than a sustainable environment. Certainly, the struggle to ‘get by’ can be seen as the most immediately pressing issue by many voters, understandably so. But this doesn’t negate them feeling threatened by all attacks on their welfare, including from environmental degradation. Before Britain’s May 2026 local and devolved nation parliament elections, a survey by Persuasion UK showed that the number of people intending to vote Green who said that ‘climate change and protecting the environment’ was one of their three main reasons for doing so, was equal to the number who placed ‘tax the rich and redistribute wealth’ among their top three reasons. The greenlash against Green parties in power stems fundamentally from the fact that those parties can’t deliver on any and all crucial issues.
Some Greens internationally have argued that as Green parties have become discredited in power they should turn away from electoral politics altogether, to exist simply as campaign or lobby organisations. That would effectively be an admittance that they don’t put forward any convincing solutions.
There are also Greens who have reacted to greenlash by pointing to the significant increase in membership and support for the Green Party in England and Wales under leader Zack Polanski, and they therefore propose similarly focusing on issues like the cost of living, high rents and inequality. This is groping in the right direction, especially if it results in environmental policies that won’t call on ordinary people to pay the cost of them. But as Oxford university academic Tarik Abou-Chadi pointed out in an article in The Guardian earlier this year: “Green parties in Europe usually started out as quite radical organisations with strong ties to ecological and anti-nuclear movements, often holding similarly radical-left positions on economics” – ie, similar to today’s England and Wales Green party. He went on: “Many of them have become more moderate over time, and in countries such as Germany and Austria have become strongly government-oriented, even governing alongside centre-right parties”.
None of the major Green parties internationally, including in Britain, take a class-based standpoint regarding the ideas they present; and none has a membership that is based on the working class. Linked to that, it is also the case that those of them that have been in a national government have shared power with pro-capitalist parties. In England and Wales, although they haven’t been part of a power-sharing national government, they have shared power with various pro-capitalist parties in local government.
Of course, it is also the case that no Green party internationally has a politically uniform membership. They have ranges, to varying degrees, from eco-socialist left to conservative right. Under the impact of capitalist crisis and the instability and volatility to come, major debates are set to continue within those parties over the programme to adopt. Some on the eco-socialist left will no doubt be drawn to the arguments of Marxists: that the working class will be the force that can challenge and remove capitalism, so it is also the force which will be able to deliver sustainable socialist economies that can protect the environment.
Judy Beishon